“The lung covid is still present, of course,” Ben van Omme begins when asked about his health. “For me, the problem has become in the muscles. In particular, the leg and arm muscles that do not work properly. I can walk poorly and stand even worse.”
Emmenaar Van Omme was one of the first in the Netherlands to contract a corona infection. As an ambulance brother, he was at the forefront of treating corona patients at the start of the pandemic.
Claudia Ester lives a little further in Emmen, as a nurse in the corona department in the hospital in Zwolle, she also contracted corona in April 2020. “Actually, little has changed in the last year,” says Ester. “My condition and my physical complaints, they all remain the same. I just can’t make progress anymore.”
Both Van Omme and Ester have post-covid syndrome, also known as lung covid. Long stands for the English word for long. It is a condition that has many forms, but is often accompanied by fatigue, shortness of breath and concentration problems. The syndrome can last for weeks, months or even years and there is no treatment yet.
Van Omme and Ester talk about long covid: